Robert Ferguson (born 16 November 1979),p.62 Mixmag December 2010 issue known professionally as Fergie, is a Northern Irish DJ and electronic music artist from Larne. He has been an internationally touring DJ and a music producer for over 20 years. He presented a radio show on BBC Radio 1 for over four years while recording 13 Essential Mixes for the station. He was featured in the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs poll seven consecutive years and currently holds the record for the highest new entry since the poll began, achieved when he was voted 8th in 2000.
Fergie played his first DJ set at the age of 9, standing on an upturned milk crate. He met Tony De Vit who invited him to England and would become Fergie's mentor. His career escalated in the 1990s when he played mainly hard house in his DJ sets at club nights such as Trade, Godskitchen, Sundissential, Golden, and Passion (where he had DJ residencies). He achieved UK Singles Chart success in the early 2000s with releases such as his remix of "Meet Her at the Love Parade". Throughout the 2000s his DJ sets became more house and techno orientated. He DJed in Ibiza every summer at nightclubs such as Amnesia, Privilege and Space. He released multiple DJ mixes including two via the Ministry of Sound record label and magazine covermounted CDs for Mixmag and DJ Mag. He also wrote a regular column for Mixmag. He founded the Excentric Muzik record label in 2007. He has released his debut artist album "Dynamite & Laserbeams" on the label in 2010.
He currently resides in Las Vegas and has been a resident DJ at the Hakkasan Nightclub at the MGM Grand and at the Omnia nightclub of Caesars Palace since they both opened. He also has a DJ residency in Las Vegas at Wet Republic. He is working under the name Fergie (DJ).
Early life Fergie's first ever visit to a nightclub came at the age of 13 when Michael Collins, a northern soul radio DJ friend of his father, jokingly offered to take him to The Arena (later known as The Met) in Armagh and his parents agreed to it. The DJ on the night was Robbie Nelson (who would later go on to form Agnelli & Nelson) and to enter the club he had to be sneaked in through a fire escape. Recalling the events in 2007 Fergie said, "It was there and then that I wanted to be a DJ. I bugged my Dad's mate in the car on the way back asking him what the music was and what they played." This was his first taste of dance music, and shortly after that, he purchased a pair of turntables.
Fergie would spend his time in the Sounds Good Music record shop in Larne (owned by Mark Dobbin and run with his brother Gleave) instead of attending school. He struggled with his education as, unknown at the time, he was dyslexic. A teacher once made him stand at the front of the classroom whilst warning the rest of the class that if they didn't concentrate on their studies Fergie was the kind of delinquent that they would become. He left school permanently aged 13; after being in a car accident, he took time off to recover and never returned. Instead, his mother, Alice, schooled him at the family home with a focus on skills required for a career in dance music. Around this time, he attended a Hellraiser rave at Ulster Hall in Belfast with Carl Cox performing. It was the experience of this rave which led to the name of his 2010 debut artist album Dynamite & Laserbeams.
Still aged 13, whilst spending afternoons playing for the Northern Ireland national under-16 football team, he began working at The House Nightclub (at the Kilwaughter House Hotel) near Larne. Fergie was too young to enter the club as a customer and so, instead, Mark Dobbin, the promoter of the club, employed him. He gave Fergie a red boiler suit to wear and paid him to collect empty glasses, brush the floor and clean the toilets. It was here Fergie would see the likes of Danny Rampling and Paul Oakenfold perform. As a perk of the job, he was allowed to practise on the club's DJ equipment (with the aid of an upturned milk crate to stand on to reach it). This led to him playing his first DJ gig when he was age 14, a warm-up set at the venue. To get him into other venues, his brother Ken and Robbie Nelson would smuggle him in under a bundle of coats.
His first paid DJ gig was at a nightclub called Airport 2000 in Templepatrick, County Antrim. When a fight broke out, the police brought the night to an early close, then warned Fergie for being underaged and in a place that banned minors from entering. Although, at the time, his DJ alias was DJ Destruction people preferred to call him Wee Fergie, which he became commonly known as. Initially, the music he was playing in his DJ sets was hardcore, although one of the first records he acquired was "Positive Education" by Slam. He continued to DJ at nightclubs while underaged, and was often thrown out of venues by the police, meaning his parents often had to collect him from police stations. By the age of 16, he had played at all the leading clubs in Ireland.
Career 1995–1996: Move to England Fergie first met his future mentor and friend Tony De Vit, the British DJ and producer, in 1995 when he was 15. De Vit was DJing at the Kilwaughter House nightclub, and Fergie took a night off from his own DJ residency (at the Airport 2000 nightclub) to see him play. Fergie managed to meet him in person and persuaded him to let him in the DJ booth during his set. They kept in touch (Fergie would call him up to 3 or 4 times a day) and from then on, De Vit stayed at Fergie's parents' house whenever he performed in Northern Ireland. De Vit invited him to his house in Birmingham, England for a week's holiday and to experience the country's club scene. During the holiday, the IRA ceasefire that was in place at the time back in Northern Ireland ended and Fergie remained in England with De Vit. Fergie accompanied De Vit to his DJ gigs around the UK, which at the time, was usually around 7 or 8 gigs a week. De Vit would ask Fergie to record a DJ mix CD for these car journeys. If he ever heard Fergie manipulate the vinyl with his hand in the recording (a mixing technique he had advised him not to use), he would eject the CD and throw it out of the car window. De Vit would often ask the club promoter if Fergie could play a short DJ set after his, with a reduction in his own set duration if required. It was around this time De Vit first took Fergie to Trade, a weekly party held on Sunday mornings at the Turnmills nightclub in London, where De Vit had a DJ residency. Fergie was still only 16.
1997–2000: Early career and success An early breakthrough in Fergie's DJ career came when he was 17, when he DJ'ed at Trade for the first time. He played in their Test Lounge; a room in the club where new DJs could be tried out and crowd reaction gauged. Present were Tony De Vit, fellow Trade DJs Steve Thomas and Malcolm Duffy, plus Trade owner Laurence Malice (amongst others). This led to a phone call a few weeks later requesting him to play the Trade main room; for his full Trade debut, he played the last set of the event at 12 pm on a Sunday afternoon. He would later become a resident DJ of Trade. In 1997, he played outside of the UK for the first time when he toured South Africa, as the support DJ for Tony De Vit. It was only his second time flying on a plane and De Vit had to be Fergie's named guardian for the trip (he had to be added to De Vit's passport). Fergie's first appearances in Ibiza came in the summer of 1998 with Trade when he played the Space main room, the Bora Bora beach club, and the back room of Privilege. The party at Bora Bora was held by Trade in memory of De Vit who had died not long before. In 2018, Fergie said of De Vit, "Tony was my mentor. I wouldn't be where I am today if it was not for his support. (...) He opened doors for me and was a huge help with the technical side of my DJing too." Fergie told Mixmag in December 2000, "Maybe I wasn't his best friend but he was certainly mine."
After De Vit's death, Fergie received support from both Laurence Malice and Andi Buckley (who became his manager), and together with his own determination, his career continued its upwards trajectory. Fergie's close association with Trade continued throughout 1999. In March, with Trade, he toured the US for the first time; at 19 years of age, he was once again not old enough to legally drink in the venues he was playing in. His debut release "People Are Still Having Sex / Ooh Sir" was released on Trade Records in April. In the summer of that year, he returned to Ibiza to be a weekly resident DJ for the Trade parties, held on Friday nights at the El Divino nightclub, and Saturday mornings at Space. In October, he compiled and mixed the second half of Trade Hotmix '99 (a covermount CD for M8 magazine). At the end of the year, he was nominated for Best New DJ at the Ericsson Muzik Awards and was voted 17th in the Mixmag DJ Awards. New Year's Eve 1999 saw him booked for 6 gigs across the UK for the turn of the new millennium.
In early 2000, he became a resident DJ for Godskitchen, which at the time, was a Birmingham-based nightclub held weekly at The Sanctuary venue. Fergie had been DJing regularly for Godskitchen including their events at The Planet nightclub in Coventry in the mid-1990s. Neil Moffitt, one of the Godskitchen promoters, became another regular source of support for Fergie and his career from this point on. In 2000, he also held DJ residencies at the Sundissential, Passion and Trade club nights in the UK. 2000 also saw Passion offer Fergie his own event at The Emporium nightclub in Coalville to showcase his sound. This became the Friday night event Storm. In March, Fergie's Let There Be Hard House DJ mix was the covermount CD for Mixmag magazine, given away free on the magazine's front cover. In the same month, Fergie's first commercially available DJ mix was released on CD; Fergie compiled and mixed CD1 of Nukleuz Presentz HardHouse Anthems (with the accompanying CD2 mixed by BK). His "House Of Pain" collaboration with BK gave him his first entry into the UK Singles Chart in April, peaking at number 87. Following this, the Trevor & Simon single "Hands Up" which included a Fergie and BK remix reached number 12 in the same chart. Over the summer of 2000, he held a DJ residency for Godskitchen's events at the Amnesia nightclub in Ibiza. Godskitchen regularly attracted between 4000 and 5000 people each night at Amnesia. He also performed on the Godskitchen float at the Radio 1 Love Parade held in Leeds in July. Later that month, he appeared on the cover of DJ Mag for the first time, alongside the headline "The new superstar DJ.